By Larry Kummer. Posted at the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Trump’s election, solidifying the Republican’s dominance at all levels of the US government, has disheartened climate activists. A new article in The Atlantic attempts to build support, but only shows the weakness of their beliefs. Perhaps the skeptics have won this round of the climate wars, but only the weather will determine which side is correct.
For 29 years advocates for public policy changes to fight climate change have struggled to convince the US public to support their agenda. They have failed. Polls show it ranks near the bottom of American’s policy priorities, and the increasingly dominant Republican Party has little interest in their recommendations.
It’s taken a while, but it looks like climate activists have worked through the process of accepting their failure. Paul Rosenberg’s January 2 article at Salon and now Meehan Crist’s article at The Atlantic suggest activists are moving into the fourth stage of the Kübler-Ross process, depression — and their leading edge is moving into the final stage of acceptance — and finding new crusades to wage.
Rosenberg’s article is discussed here. Crist’s article is less interesting, mostly just the usual throwing chaff into debate. But it is revealing in its own way. The opening is a classic tactic by climate activists.
“There has been a subtle shift recently in the rhetoric of many conservative pundits and politicians around climate change. For decades, the common refrain has been flat-out denial — either that climate change is not happening, or that any change is not caused by human activity. Which is why viewers might have been surprised to see Tucker Carlson of Fox News nodding along thoughtfully on January 6 as climate scientist Judith Curry, a controversial figure in climate science, explained, ‘Yes it’s warming and yes humans contribute to it. Everybody agrees with that, and I’m in the 98% [of scientists who agree]. It’s when you get down to the details that there’s genuine disagreement.’”
The first point is an outright lie, evident from his failure to cite any examples. Only a tiny fraction of skeptics believe that “climate change is not happening,.” The climate is always changing. As for the second, there is a fringe among climate skeptics who believe that “any change is not caused by human activity.” But the debate for the past 29 years, since James Hansen warned the Senate in 1988, is and has been about how much of the past warming is anthropogenic — and about forecasts of future temperatures. That’s true not just of skeptics (both scientists and laypeople), but among mainstream climate scientists as well. Let’s review the evidence, starting with what Curry said to Tucker Carlson.
CURRY: “…what you’re seeing is this dominant theme of human caused climate change — which is where all of the research is being directed. And far too little funding and effort going to understanding natural climate variability. That’s my concern. …It’s been warming for several hundred years. The key question is how much of the recent warming, say for the last 50 years, has been caused by humans. My interpretation of the evidence is that we really can’t tell, and I don’t see a clearer signal that is caused by humans predominantly.
“…Humans are contributing something, we don’t know how much. From the evidence that I’ve seen, I don’t think that it’s the dominant cause. …It’s warming, humans contribute to it. Everyone agrees with that, I’m in the 90%. It’s when you get down to the details that there is genuine disagreement that is really glossed over in the media.”
The Summary of Policymakers in IPCC’s AR5 Working Group I said “It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.” More relevant to attempts to control CO2 emissions, chapter 10 said “more than half of the observed increase in GMST {global mean surface temperature} from 1951 to 2010 is very likely due to the observed anthropogenic increase in GHG {greenhouse gas} concentrations.”
In a 2012 survey of approximately 6,550 scientists studying climate change, 66% believed that greenhouse gases caused over 50% of this warming. Only 12% believed GHGs caused less than 51% of this warming. Another 10% said “unknown”, 9% said “don’t know”, and 3% said other. More interestingly, they asked how confident these scientists were in their conclusion that over 51% of the warming resulted from increased GHG: 34% were virtually certain, 32% were extremely certain, 20% said very likely, 8% said likely, Curry clearly holds a minority opinion, but has company among other climate scientists.
But activists such as Crist have good reason to focus on past warming: there is little agreement about forecasts of future warming. That is so important to hide that there are few surveys of scientists about this key point. The dynamics of future warming are the “details” that Crist tries to conceal. Curry explains at her website.
“Our ability to predict the effect of increasing CO2 is very limited. The IPCC AR5 puts the value of equilibrium climate sensitivity between 1.5 – 4.5 C, with ‘likely’ confidence, implying significant probabilities outside this range. Referring to this as very limited ability to predict the effect of additional CO2 on climate is not only defensible, but it is in accord with the IPCC’s own conclusion on this.”
After a long discussion of past climate (ignoring the key issues), Crist gives this astonishing quote.
“But according to Maureen Raymo of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, we know why climate changes naturally, and non-human activity can’t explain the rapid changes observed in the past century. “The Ice Ages happen due to subtle changes in the sun-earth distance that unfold over thousands of years, and which can lead to sometimes rapid climate change, when thresholds are crossed.” These cycles are still happening, but “the same factors that cause these huge Ice Age swings could not possibly be invoked to explain the warming we now see.”
Crist does not tell us who says that the same factors causing the “huge Ice Age {temperature} swings” explain the present warming. To say that climate scientists understand the cause of the massive ice ages is irrelevant to explaining the relatively tiny 2% increase since the mid-19th century (CO2 levels increased steeply only after 1950). But Crist’s analysis gets even stranger.
“As Gavin Schmidt, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Model, put it, ‘In science, nothing is ever known perfectly. Is there remaining uncertainty in the exact value of gravity? Yes. But to something like the fourth decimal place. It doesn’t matter. So the question is: Is the remaining uncertainty relevant to any policy decision anyone would want to make? And the answer is: no.’ …
“According to Schmidt, ‘To say that science isn’t settled on things people are still researching is totally irrelevant. Does the earth orbit the sun? There’s no substantial ambiguity about the answer to that question, despite the fact that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of scientists working on gravity. There are lots of interesting things about gravity, it’s just that that is not one of them. There are lots of interesting things about climate change, and adaptation, and interactions between air pollution and clouds, but they’re just not relevant to the question, which is: Is what’s going on related to humans? And the answer is: Yes, it is.’”
It is absurd to consider scientists’ understanding of gravity, with their history of remarkable predictions (e.g., the New Horizons space probe’s journey to Pluto and beyond), equivalent to their understanding of climate — with a history of false or unproven predictions. It’s the kind of exaggeration which has produced three decades of failure for climate crusaders.
There is a second level to this. Public policy decisions about climate change — and the massive efforts proposed to fight it — require forecasts of future warming with proven reliability. Equating climate science with gravity is propaganda, not evidence. That Schmidt resorts to such rhetorical tricks shows the weakness of his belief.
Crist concludes with one of the oddest statements I have seen from a climate activist.
“The recent shift in conservative rhetoric exploits legitimate scientific uncertainty that most scientists agree is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy. Despite overwhelming evidence, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action.”
Crist quotes one scientist, and from this concludes that “most scientists agree”. That’s a guess, or a lie, or perhaps “fake news”. As for his last sentence, what is this “scientific consensus” about the need for policy action? Crist does not tell us, let alone give any evidence for it. As with Schmidt’s claims, that these are strongest claims Crist can give for his beliefs show their weakness.
Crist begins by mocking a distinguished scientist, but in 1900 words she presents no rebuttal to Curry’s concerns.
Are activists grieving for their failure?
In December 2015 I wrote that Activists go thru 5 stages of grief for the climate change campaign. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. We all have heard years of denial and anger. There was a brief period of bargaining, with activists attempting to deal with skeptics. Now we are in depression, and for a few — acceptance, as they find new crusades to pursue. Several recent articles support that theory. Crist’s conclusion, citing as his authority that not-a-climate-agency, the US military, show depression and perhaps acceptance.
“In September 2016, carbon-dioxide levels in the air crossed the dreaded 400 ppm threshold, and we are not likely to dip back below that level in our lifetimes. Crossing this red line signals an irrevocable shift toward an increasingly unrecognizable planet. …According to the Pentagon’s 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, climate change will cause catastrophic changes to Earth’s ecosystems and wreak havoc on human populations, including famine, mass migration, and war. A carbon tax may be too little, too late, …”
Our dysfunctional response to climate change shows the decay of America’s ability to see and respond to our environment. We need a reality-based community. It won’t build itself. It won’t happen soon.
See Curry’s interview. Judge for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wed1xoB0fcM
For More Information
For more information about this vital issue see The keys to understanding climate change, see my posts about forecasts of the future world, and especially these posts about the campaign for public policy action to fight climate change — how it went wrong and how it can be fixed…
- Ten years after Katrina: let’s learn from those predictions of more & bigger hurricanes.
- Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions.
- Can the Left adapt to the Trump era? Watch their climate activists for clues.
- Good news for the New Year! Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.
- The bottom line: How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
- Important: Climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
Climbing on my favorite hobby horse whenever Larry Kummer writes a WUWT guest article — after all, a hobby horse is no fun if you can’t keep on riding it — once again I offer my opinion that the public debate over the validity of today’s climate science will not reach critical mass unless and until government begins demanding real sacrifice on the part of the American people in the name of fighting climate change, something which the government has so far refused to do.
So far, the only Americans being asked to make real sacrifice in the fight against climate change are the coal miners and their families. However, they are a relatively small group of people who are a dying breed anyway as a consequence of the powerful market forces now working against them, mostly cheap natural gas.
Donald Trump and the Republicans will give coal miners a temporary reprieve from the specter of the Clean Power Plan. But unless the courts eventually rule it unconstitutional, the CPP and other faux climate action programs will be making a comeback once the Democrats return to power.
How soon will that happen?
The winds of political change are fickle. If Trump and the Republicans don’t deliver on their economic promises, and if incidents like the Flynn fiasco become a regular feature of Trump-style governance, the Democrats could be back in power as soon as 2020 with a strong mandate to do it their way.
Climate change will once again be at the forefront of their public policy agenda, polemically at least.
But will the Democrats resume their past habit of talking loudly about climate change while at the same time refusing to promote the kinds of aggressive anti-carbon measures needed to force a quick reduction in America’s carbon emissions?
Such measures would include enactment of a revenue-positive carbon tax, restrictions on the supply and availability of all carbon fuels, aggressively-enforced energy conservation measures, and an aggressively-enforced set of anti-carbon regulations that touch every nook and cranny of the American economy.
Once they are back in power, will the Democrats return to business as usual? Will they talk loudly about climate change while at the same time refusing to push any actions which might demand real sacrifice on the part of the American public, the kind of actions and the kind sacrifice that’s absolutely necessary if steep emission reductions are to be achieved?
Greenpeace, Sierra Club, NRDC, and others have annual budgets in excess of $100 million. They are larger than some publicly traded companies. That’s despite EPA data showing emissions from six major pollutants have declined 63% since 1980.
The issue is not going away. There is too much money to be hoovered up by the environmental zealots, activists, and the “alternative” energy companies who buy Democrats for the purpose of using the tax code to fleece the politically unconnected by forcing them to buy uneconomic energy via mandates and using the taxes the politically unconnected pay to subsidize the politically connected producers of uneconomic energy.
There is way too much money at stake in a wholly corrupt system. Thinking it is on its last legs is wishful thinking.
I believe it is on public record a certain set of brothers involved in fossil fuel have put 88 billion dollars since 1995 into organisations opposed to the science of climate change.
The amount of money going to Heartland and the GWPF, etc is immense
No “set of brothers involved in fossil fuel have put 88 billion dollars since 1995 into organisations opposed to the science of climate change.” You can’t produce any documents to support that false assertion, so why make it?
The Heartland Institute took in a paltry $4.5 million in donations last year.
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2015/363/309/2015-363309812-0ce4733e-9.pdf
The Koch Brothers, if that is the mysterious “set of brothers” you refer to, were major funders of the Berkeley Earth project.
Ah, yes, the big project run by a known skeptic that all the other skeptics hoped would cast further doubt on AGW. It ended up doing just the opposite, and the former skeptic running it is one no more. Project Director Richard Muller:
Sad.
Muller was never a skeptic.
He claims he was, in the text I quoted. Is this the “no true Scotsman” effect, in which any member of the tribe who disavows the tribe’s beliefs was automatically never a member?
Yes, and another claimed you could keep your doctor. I find it hard to believe you are that naive.
Possibly one of the stupidest responses I’ve ever seen. Are you Jim Hoft?
Stupid to those who believe no one lies. You do know what a lie is, right? You have made several. The most recent of which is contained in your response.
LOL! Show us that record. You claim it is. And yet, even the richest man in the world has not had that kind of money.
You are not even trying to be believable.
From he evidence I think we can say that Muller was a skeptic, but not a denier. He was a skeptic in the genuine sense. He saw what he though were problems and he set about testing those problems. When he got the data he accepted it and concluded that the problems had not resulted in he erroneous results he had feared.
[Muller was never a skeptic, he’s a bait and switch artist – Anthony]
An excellent example of the ad hominem argument; if you don’t like the message, attack the messenger.
The classic bell curve of alarmist over-reach tactics still holds. At this point in the curve it is not just a metric like low rankings of public concerns. It has actually reached a point of mass distrust and negative rank values in the ratings associated with it and the people and groups still slinging it. The public is smarter than the PR strategists give them credit for. Alternatively, the key strategists are not in full control and cannot control the juvenile delinquent types that pollute the message. At any rate it is now a negative issue that generates red flags among the public and voters rather than just low ratings or neutral responses. It is also like quick sand in that the more they try to innovate and reshape the same basic lost cause message the more they sink as the public learns to read the signaling with greater skill. Not understanding that skills change is further evidence of the narrow minded PR approach.
What a bunch of bull. One of the major issues that climate science is studying is how to separate natural variability and the warming trend. To do this, we have to learn more about the dynamics of internal variability and how various cycles interact with each other and at different time scales. This is not being ignored at all. Uncertainty about future temperature increases and other effects also has to do with poorly understood thresholds for sudden phase changes, as well as possible positive and negative feedbacks. Negative feedbacks would be great, but we have to discount the risks involved in (uncertain!) positive feedbacks.
webej
“One of the major issues that climate science is studying…” – ABSOLUTE NONSENCE! This is settled science; we ain’t “studying” nothing! We’ve moved into saving the world (well, actually, taxing the world).
Griff will confirm this as soon as he gets more boilerplate from the mother ship. He will be here any minute…
Would this be the same guys who proclaimed that global warming had so overwhelmed natural variability that it no longer made any sense to talk about natural variability?
If the “climate scientists” actually behaved as you claim, then there would be no problem with them.
I’ll start worrying about positive feedbacks when someone can finally manage to find one.
Simple thought experiment is sufficient to disprove any belief in substantial positive feed backs.
We’re still here.
Had the climate been dominated by positive feed backs life would have ended back when CO2 levels topped 5000ppm.
The natural trends are quite clear, as is the evidence that warming is adding an additional level of change on top of natural cycles.
you only need to look at arctic sea ice for an example.
Much lower than the low point in the 1940s and continuing to decline. That shows the warming influence on top of the natural cycle/variation.
Not all activists move at the same speed. Griff is still in denial.
” and their leading edge is moving into the final stage of acceptance — and finding new crusades to wage.”
and that would be “social justice” with schools as their lever because only evil people would deny all kids a chance to succeed in their mind, to have equal schools for all our whole culture and our entire economic system will have to be erased everyone must be made equal on all accounts no more choice no more capitalism no more local control but don’t worry citizens, the experts will tell us what to do when how and how much
If the CO2/carbon situation is as critical as climate alarmists claim, then rationing of fossil fuels should be imposed.
When will alarmists demand rationing? Probably never as this would prompt the public to look into what their real agenda is.
“When will alarmists demand rationing?”
There’s no real call for rationing. A carbon tax, like that one being proposed by Republicans in Congress, will serve the purpose.
Only if the purpose is political suicide!
The purpose is to prevent or alleviate massive levels of human suffering and death, and the loss of tens of trillions of dollars of the resources of the nation. I realize that “skeptics” don’t care about that because they’re worried it might cost them some of their money. Saving lives is unimportant compared to that.
The loss of life and $$? Seems they are doing that all on their own as it is. Starvation and imposed costs with no results. I guess that is why liberals love it.
Just how is a carbon tax-giving more money to the federal government, supposed to limit global warming?
Having users of fossil fuels pay the full cost of their activities, instead of spreading those costs among everybody, reduces “The Tragedy of the Commons” and strengthens the economic “Invisible Hand.” They will tend to use less and find alternatives. The laws establishing those taxes would also specify that the increase in revenue be used to fund other conservation efforts. For example, replacing all lighting in government buildings with LEDs would have a huge effect on energy use.
What purpose is that, electing Democrats? No Republican in Congress is proposing a carbon tax. To do so would be political suicide. Bernie Sanders or Sheldon Whitehouse might get away with it, but no Republican that voted for it would be reelected. It the last Congress a resolution against a carbon tax passed with every Republican’s support.
James Baker and Hank Paulson will be politely ignored.
Talking about natural variability means that we know almost nothing about the climate change. We know that El Nino can increase the global temperature even by 0.6 C degrees during few months. But still we do not know why the temperature during the Little Ice Age was about 1.0 C degrees lower than today. Both belong to the class of natural variability but they have different meaning. If we would know exactly the latter case, we would have solved 80 % of causes of the global warming.
Alan McIntyre, how’d you support a declaration
“As Gavin Schmidt, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Model, put it, ‘In science, nothing is ever known perfectly. Is there remaining uncertainty in the exact value of gravity? Yes.”
staying calm.
Everybody feel free to correct my where I’m wrong:
1. g = 9.80665
2. g (earth, nowadays) = 9.80665 but we have to consider the contemporary mass of earth when computing
3. so what.
g is not even constant on earth’s surface. Gavin Schmidt was talking about the G in Newton’s formula,
F=GMm/(r^2)
People like Gavin Schmidt, Al Gore and Allan McIntyre will denounce Physics to defend their gain.
Just who are you talking about? My name is Alan McIntire: I saw no posts by “Allan McIntyre”
I did’t take Gavin Schmidt’s word for it. I checked it out and provided a link showing that G is known only to 3 significant digits. He was talking about Newton’s constant,
F = GMm/(r^2).
And where did I “denounce Physics”?
True, but we may be beginning to figure out why that is:
Why do measurements of the gravitational constant vary so much?
Science marches on.
How can the recorded pauses in warming be reconciled with the idea of warming caused by greenhouse gases? Where do the greenhouse gases go during the pauses? How effective can CO2 be in slowing heat dissipation from the Earth’s surface if there is only one cubic foot of CO2 for every 2500 cubic feet of atmosphere?
1. You might add that the effect of Co2 is logarithmic. It takes an increase of atmospheric content from
1 to 2. 4. 8. 16. 32, 64 etc to get an increase in wattage from
x to roughly 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 etc. From Trenberth’s, radiation figures, the surface gets about 490 watts, 390 in sensible heat, 100 in the latent heat of vaporization of water and in convection.
From the Stefan-Boltzmann formula, temperature is proportional to the fourth ROOT of radiation.
earth’s average temperature NOW is about 288 K. Plug in the figures, and we WOULD get a 4C increase in temperatures, but only in the event that atmospheric CO2 increases by a factor of 64 and all of the additional wattage goes into sensible heat rather than latenet heat. – We”l run out of economically recoverable fossil fuel and switch to nuclear power LONG before that point, rainfall and clouds would ALSO increase, further reducing that 4C increase in world temperatures.
CO2 DOES increase temperatures, but the increase is too piddling to notice, washed out by natural variations.
2. In reply to bobmunck
“Given that the scale height of the atmosphere is 8400m or about 27,500 feet, heat from the Earth’s surface has to penetrate a full eleven feet of pure carbon dioxide to escape from the biosphere. That’s quite a bit.”
If the scale height of the atmosphere is 840 meters, heat from earth’s surface would have to penetrate 840 meters of atmosphere as dense as at earth’s surface. Where do you get the 11 feet? Are you adding the assumption that our atmosphere is pure CO2 as dense as our current atmosphere at sea level?
YOu’ve also got to add in that not all infrared radiation is blocked by CO2, only a small fraction is. From
MIchael Hammer’s post here,
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/03/radical-new-hypothesis-on-the-effect-of-greenhouse-gases/
“…Solving Planck’s equation on a spreadsheet for a 288 K source at wavelength increments of 0.2 microns and then numerically integrating yields energies as follows;
Below 8 microns 45 watts/m2
8 microns to 14 microns 143 watts/m2
14 microns to 15.5 microns 28 watts/m2
Above 15.5 microns 174 watts/m2”
CO2 affects only the 14 to 15.5 micron range, 28 watts out of 390, or 7.2% of earth’s infrared radiation.
Your statement is true, but I would point out that the actual scale height is 8400 meters, not 840.
By using William Everett’s approximation that 400 ppm of CO2 corresponds to one foot of CO2 to 2500 feet of the atmosphere. 8400 meters divided by 2500 and converted to feet.
I made no assumptions about the percentage blocked.
Reconciliation is easy because the pauses exist only in the minds of “skeptics,” not in the real world. They’re an idea/fairy tale produced by cherry-picking and mathematical tricks, not something factual. You’ve been duped.
Given that the scale height of the atmosphere is 8400m or about 27,500 feet, heat from the Earth’s surface has to penetrate a full eleven feet of pure carbon dioxide to escape from the biosphere. That’s quite a bit.
Trenberth is a skeptic? Since when? Now you are just making stuff up.
@philjourdan: You’re a Trump supporter, aren’t you?
Reading Michael Hammer’s post, see link above, I learned something in addition to what was posted.
See the figure in section 4 here:
https://neutrium.net/heat_transfer/blackbody/
Note that as temperature increases, the amount of radiation between 14 and 15.5 microns ALSO increases, but not as rapidly as the temperature. That means, as earth’s temperature rises, the FRACTION, not the absolute amount, of the radiation intercepted by CO2 DECREASES- another negative feedback- though small with small temperature differences.
The pauses exist on the temperature graphs provided by NOAA they are not imaginings. Look at earlier versions of the graphs not the recent ones that are designed to mislead. The temperature readings used to complete these graphs are taken about four feet above the surface of the Earth. The heat they detect is that that has been reflected by the Earth’s surface. I would then think that whatever effect carbon dioxide was going to have on these temperature measurements would have to occur within four feet of the Earth’s surface.
The record of temperature change since1880, as provided by government agencies in the UK and US, can be a valuable tool for predicting future temperature. A host of computer models constructed by “scientists” failed to predict that the warming period that began in the mid 70’s would end around 2002. A person who had noticed a possible pattern to the temperature change shown in official temperature records might well have predicted the end of the warming period mentioned within a year or two. I am alarmed at the press releases and the website content of the official measuring agencies in this country (NOAA and GISS). They seem to be attempts to mislead the public into believing that warming is continuous. Warming is occurring but it is not continuous and the past products of these agencies show that. Their recent public pronouncements cause me to wonder about whether the future measuring duties of these organizations will be corrupted in order to bolster their apparent buy-in to the belief that man is the cause of global warming.
Those are values for air temperature. Global warming is the increase in thermal energy of the entire biosphere, not just the atmosphere. The ocean masses about 300 times as much as the atmosphere (1.4E21 kg vs. 5.2E18), and water has four times the specific heat capacity of air (4.18 J⋅g^(−1)⋅K^(−1) vs 1.00). Looking at atmospheric temperatures is only looking at 0.1% of GW. (Actually less than that when you take heat of fusion and heat of vaporization into account.)
You don’t think that the carbon dioxide in the entire atmosphere, not just the bottom four feet, would affect the amount of thermal energy impinging on the surface? What a strange assumption. You don’t appear to understand the situation at all.
What I believe is that the heat reflected from the Earth’s surface begins to dissipate immediately and continuously as distance from the surface increases. It is the level of heat near the surface that is felt by humans, animals and plants. If the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 400 parts per million (one part per 2500 parts) then I would assume that is the level that will act upon the heat close to the Earth. Additionally, if air temperature is not a realistic measure of global warming then why do the current arguments over whether or not there is AGW focus on air temperature data?
Well, sure, but the gradient with altitude isn’t very steep. The temperature 100 and 1000 feet above ground is pretty much the same as at ground level.
Because most “skeptics” can’t understand anything more complex than simple mechanisms like those determining air temperature, so it’s all they can argue about. Actual climate scientists are discussing much more complex and subtle things like ocean salinity and wind patterns. (Typical title from the current edition of Nature: “The adsorption of fungal ice-nucleating proteins on mineral dusts: a terrestrial reservoir of atmospheric ice-nucleating particles.” Imagine the “skeptical” commenters here trying to understand what a supercooled cloud is.)
That climate models make predictions is a myth.
Definition: “X is a model of Y if X can be used to answer a given set of questions about Y.” Climate models may be constructed to answer questions about future states of the climate, but they must be designed to do so. Most are not.
bobmunck:
I would explain the phenomenon of non-prediction by the global warming models by pointing out that prediction occurs by assignment of values to conditional probabilities. For assignment of these values, sampling units of various descriptions must be counted but for no such model is the underlying statistical population identified.
I used to teach Prob. & Stats., so I know that what you wrote is gibberish. It might have fooled most of the commenters here though, so good try. W.C. Fields would have been proud of you.
bobmunck:
Your response to my claim is of the form of an ad hominem argument. An ad hominem argument is illogical. Do you have a logical argument to share with ut?
Sure, I could just quote what you wrote; it’s prima facie gibberish. I didn’t feel that necessary because your text immediately precedes my comment.
I’ve looked at a bunch of your comments in your DISQUS profile; you do this a lot, don’t you? The gobbledygook argument?
bobmunck:
Real scientists make logical arguments. Phonies don’t.
Wow, you actually understood my point. Now try to do it.
bobmunck:
Do you claim to have made a logical argument in the course of our conversation? If so, kindly share the identity of this argument with us.
Yes. I stated that what you wrote was gibberish, gobbledygook, word-salad. The truth of that is clear; your words speak for themselves.
I’ve made quite a few comments in this thread, most of them responding to actual cogent arguments by others. Read them.
bubmunck:
The argument that you reference is not a “logical” argument for it is not of the form of such an argument.
If you were capable of understanding what a logical argument is, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
bobmunck:
No. When an argument is “logical” it is of one of several forms. Your argument is not of one of these forms. You are muddying the waters by stating falsehoods and wasting my time/. Good bye.
Short answer again – no. BS Artists are never at a lack of obfuscation and proliferation of words signifying nothing.
An interesting sentence. It probably sounded better in the original Jabberwocky.
Relief from the artist was short lived. Again, lacking knowledge, he tries BS.
I notice you’re completely unable to address the NOAA article. It does, after all, refute your argument.
Actually no it does not. Again, we are not talking quantity. Given you do not understand that, I find your “claim” of having “taught” Prob & Stats to be highly improbable.
It identifies the “flavor” of CO2 uniquely produced by human activity and quantifies the CO2 of that flavor in the atmosphere. Exactly what you argued wasn’t being done. Deny all you want, but I’m sure you know you’re lying.
It identifies the “flavor” of CO2 uniquely produced by human activity and quantifies the CO2 of that flavor in the atmosphere. Exactly what you argued wasn’t being done. Ignore the truth all you want, but I’m sure you know you’re being dishonest.
Short answer – no. He is not capable.
At Brown? That figures.
The air temperature inches from ground level is not the same as the surface temperature.
Science as it’s done in the modern world is overdue for a reassessment. One example is Milankovitch rhythms, mentioned here as the undisputed source of ice ages due to decreased insolation because of Earth’s orbital motions. One problem with this is the opposite effects of insolation in the northern and southern hemispheres, requiring additional forcing effects to make the process work. What if the driving forces were not insolation at all, but gravitational working on Earth’s delicately balanced plate tectonic system? And what if associated non-explosive volcanism elevated above sea level, as in Iceland, has a global warming effect through its non-production of aerosols and its release of HCl, which depletes ozone and thus allows greater UV-B irradiation of the planet? Clearly, there’s a lot of factors that haven’t been considered here, and this is just a small sample of those. In my new book, “The Real World, A Synthesis,” available as an ebook and a print edition on amazon,com, I consider these and a wide range of other scenarios, all of which are based on two things, hard evidence and consistency with what is actually known from such evidence about the operation of the Earth system. Commentary is welcome. Thanks!
David Bennett Laing:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment. I would add to hard evidence and consistency with what is known from such evidence consistency with logic. Consistency with logic is not currently a feature of the methods of global warming climatology.
Over many centuries the quality of products of research suffered from the lack of a solution to the problem of induction. The problem was of how, in a logically justified manner, to reach general conclusions from specific instances of them. In 1963, the theoretical physicist Ronald E. Christensen solved this problem through an application of information theory. Like most scientists, climatologists ignored this advance. They continued to reach general conclusions from specific instances of them in a logically unjustified manner as was their tradition.. .
According to the table of U. S. Standard Atmospheric Heights and Temperatures, The temperature at 0 feet altitude is 59.0 degrees F. and the temperature at 1000 feet altitude is 55.4 F. Thereafter the temperature decrease for each 1000 feet of altitude is close to uniform at either 3.5 or 3.6 degrees. This is an indication that distance from the Earth’s surface governs the temperature decrease without any additional noticeable influences. However, water vapor, at its higher fluctuation levels, appears to have some influence on temperature in an ambiguous manner. Limiting heat loss at night and heat gain during daytime. It should be remembered that atmospheric water vapor at those levels has almost 100 times the presence of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The current sparse cover of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would not seem to have any noticeable effect on temperature except in the minds of some politicians and their followers, scientific and otherwise.
You’re declaring that all the 1000-foot intervals show identical temperature decreases based on what just one of them is? What’s the decrease from 1000 feet to 2000 feet? From 33000 feet to 34000 feet? Is it 3.5 or 3.6 all the way up?
Actually, your conclusion is the exact opposite. You’re claiming that the temperature decrease is a uniform 3.55 ± 0.5°F no matter what the distance from the Earth’s surface.